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Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach -- Module 3

There's a whole lot coming down the pike for DDO, including new solo content, a level cap increase, new dungeons and PvP.

There are lots of things that Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach does quite well. When played as designed, the game comes as close as any video game ever has to really giving that fun "tabletop D&D" feeling of exploring a forgotten tomb with a group of boon companions. For all that, though, the game has a number of widely acknowledged problems that stem not from its deficiencies as a Dungeons & Dragons game, but as an MMO. A lack of soloable content, crafting and PvP hurt, regardless of how much short-term fun there is in exploring dungeons. None of that seemed to weigh on game designer David Eckelberry as he demonstrated the game at this year's Gen Con, though.

"The worst way to solve our problems is to make wholesale changes to the things we know work," Eckelberry told us as he ran a paladin through one of the new dungeons coming in the game's next mini-update, which will add the first portion of a new story arc called "Litany of the Dead." It's a series of mid-level dungeons detailing the story of a sprawling vampiric plot in Stormreach. "We've gotten a lot of praise on our dungeon design, but we're really not satisfied with it." According to Eckelberry, the game's next two mini-updates and the upcoming Module 3 are going to have some new dungeons with pretty radical designs. Among the things players have to look forward to are a strange mission in which they must slaughter as many dwarves as they can in order to actually convince the dwarves to help them, and a lich's tower built around a huge open atrium. Players will be able to see the lich the minute they enter, but in order to reach it, they'll essentially have to fight their way up a spiral staircase while the lich throws everything it has at them -- and insults them the whole way.

The coming module also offers plenty of new content for both veteran players and newbies. Module 3 will raise the level cap to 12 and add in new level three and level four soloable dungeons. These will be the first dungeons expressly designed for solo play, rather than just being retuned party-based dungeons. According to Eckelberry, this doesn't signal a shift in design, but a rational extension of the "newbie" process. "DDO is always going to be a party-based game at heart," Eckelberry said. "That's just the nature of Dungeons & Dragons. The way we're viewing solo content is a way to ease new players into the world." At launch, the game would cut players off after the tutorial. The new higher level solo dungeons give newbies stuff to do while they build up the social network they need to get involved in more party-based content.